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The fallacy that cities grow by trinkets like the toy streetcar or states grow by the slow speed intercity rail seems prevalent on these forums. Why, I don't know. Some of you seem like intelligent people. don't you know that these expenditures will not bring back the foundry, machining and assembly jobs that Ohio has lost? And, they are hardly going to steal high tech jobs from tech centers.

What conservatives want for Ohio is to "right size" our spending. Not pretend we are California. After all, life in states with much lower per capita budgets than Ohio is just fine. Its the downward spiral of raising taxes and fees that accelerates this job loss. Let's live on what we can tax at say a level that makes us maybe the 20th worst state on taxes and business costs instead of 46 or of 50.

You won't be able to fix the mess we are in by the precious "cut cost and taxes" scheme. I am not saying this to say pubs are wrong or democrats right. Step back a moment.

I am amazed by how blind everyone is to the unfunded obligations of states and municipalities across the whole country. Everyone is myopic: "ALL OHIO has to do is cut costs, layoff fat government lazy employees, 'right size""-- totally oblivious to the fact that virtually EVERY municipality and state is considering this approach.

If everyone did this at once, you would have massive job losses , decreased tax revenues, more foreclosures etc etc hitting the system. Plus cutting taxes-- LOL, the governments will start defaulting.

What people keep "forgetting" is that most muni and state governments have been keeping huge amounts of unfunded liabilities off the books (recall Enron?) A recent study from Rochester estimated that the unfunded pension liability in the US is 3.5 TRILLION. That is not some wild joke. That is a figure so huge it can't be fixed. It means defaults.

Its impossible to even point all this out without people starting to scream their hackneyed, useless old partisian insults. That is why it won't be fixed, IMO. First, its nearly impossible to have a civil discussion about it; second, the deficits are so big (in the trillions) that there are no good measures to fix it.

How did it get this way? Well, in the case of municipalities you had armies of amateurs running the governments and budgets and making assumptions such as: "If our pension plan returns 10% per year for 30 years then we will have no problems meeting our rising obligations".

However, there is no more kicking the can down the road, the road has ended.

The fallacy that cities grow by trinkets like the toy streetcar or states grow by the slow speed intercity rail seems prevalent on these forums. Why, I don't know. Some of you seem like intelligent people. don't you know that these expenditures will not bring back the foundry, machining and assembly jobs that Ohio has lost?

Electric traction rail is not for "bringing back jobs and industries", but for providing an alternative transportation for when fossil fueled automobiles, buses and trucks become too expensive or unavailable.

We know or we should know that fossil fuels are a finite resource and are eventually depleted. The ever growing demand is certain. Therefore, we should expend our finite resource budget on the most efficient forms of transportation. On land, that form is electric traction rail. (Unless a more efficient, cheaper form comes along).

And when the fossil fuel spigot is turned off, those areas with electric traction rail will still have a viable means to transport people and cargo.
Perhaps that might encourage industries to locate nearby.

Before petroleum there were boats and trains.
After petroleum there will be boats and trains.

Electric traction rail is not for "bringing back jobs and industries", but for providing an alternative transportation for when fossil fueled automobiles, buses and trucks become too expensive or unavailable.

We know or we should know that fossil fuels are a finite resource and are eventually depleted. The ever growing demand is certain. Therefore, we should expend our finite resource budget on the most efficient forms of transportation. On land, that form is electric traction rail. (Unless a more efficient, cheaper form comes along).

And when the fossil fuel spigot is turned off, those areas with electric traction rail will still have a viable means to transport people and cargo.
Perhaps that might encourage industries to locate nearby.

Before petroleum there were boats and trains.
After petroleum there will be boats and trains.

Actually, it would necessitate industries to locate nearby.

Taxes and the likes have little to do with attracting business aside from blue collar manufacturing work which is leaving America for good, for the most part.

Why do New York City and Chicago have premium office space at high demand while low-tax havens like Houston and Atlanta sprawl outward unsustainably? Ask yourself why Manhattan's skyline is packed with offices and why people are willing to pay $2000 a month for a studio there, combined with EVIL high taxes.

Coincidentally, before 1950, most did. Or had a spur laid to their factory.

Quote:

Originally Posted by UKUKUK

Taxes and the likes have little to do with attracting business aside from blue collar manufacturing work which is leaving America for good, for the most part.

If / when the socialist system is discarded, manufacturing industries will resume. (No taxes on producers or laborers)

Quote:

Originally Posted by UKUKUK

Why do New York City and Chicago have premium office space at high demand while low-tax havens like Houston and Atlanta sprawl outward unsustainably? Ask yourself why Manhattan's skyline is packed with offices and why people are willing to pay $2000 a month for a studio there, combined with EVIL high taxes.

Concentrations of people and commerce is one reason.
Access to cheap water transport may be another.
Location, location, location.

And the respective epoch of greatest expansion defined which mode was dominant. Post 1950 expansion favored the automobile, and suburban sprawl at the expense of compact central cities.

Post 2015 expansion will favor electric powered transportation and population consolidation, at the expense of suburban sprawl and strip malls.

If / when the socialist system is discarded, manufacturing industries will resume. (No taxes on producers or laborers)

This is where you're wrong. Nobody is going to build anything in America, even with no taxes, if they have to pay their workers a minimum wage of $1.00 or more when they can have near-slave labor in Indonesia work for $0.02 an hour instead. Welcome to the global economy. The only way to combat this would be to implement tariffs on countries that don't have competitive wages.

This is where you're wrong. Nobody is going to build anything in America, even with no taxes, if they have to pay their workers a minimum wage of $1.00 or more when they can have near-slave labor in Indonesia work for $0.02 an hour instead. Welcome to the global economy. The only way to combat this would be to implement tariffs on countries that don't have competitive wages.

You forget that the only reason that near-slave labor in Asia is viable is because they can ship those goods here cheaply. Even the relatively modest increases in gas prices in 2008 caused a significant shift in steel production from China back to the US, because it just became too expensive to ship the steel over here, regardless of how low the wages are in China. As fuel prices increase, manufacturing of heavier items will shift back here (or to be more precise, closer to where it's ultimately used), and as it increases further, more and more of that manufacturing will have to shift as well.

Even now, the cost of shipping and logistical issues with maintaining quality and trying to manage overseas operations nullifies a lot of the cost savings of offshored manufacturing. It IS still cheaper, but not by as much as you might think, and it won't take much of an increase in shipping costs to make it no longer worthwhile.

So we'll put production just across the border in Mexico. There's an answer to every logistics problem, but no end to greed. Americans have no standard for quality, nor any realization of what has happened to this country's economy since the industrial collapse. NAFTA, Reaganomics, and the global-capitalist market in general have knocked the competition out of our favor.

This is where you're wrong. Nobody is going to build anything in America, even with no taxes, if they have to pay their workers a minimum wage of $1.00 or more when they can have near-slave labor in Indonesia work for $0.02 an hour instead. Welcome to the global economy. The only way to combat this would be to implement tariffs on countries that don't have competitive wages.

I may be wrong, but one thing is for certain, once all taxes (and bureaucratic overhead) is removed from American production and labor, equitable trade will resume.

You may denounce the near-slave labor in Indonesia, but that $0.02 per hour can buy another man's hour of labor - in that market. Which is what equitable trade is all about.

In America, the socialist overhead insures inequitable trade.
To illustrate, back in 1991, I knew an on-site Computer tech who was paid $10/hour. But his company billed at $75/hour.
For that tech to "hire himself" for one hour, he'd have to work 7.5 hours.
That's INEQUITABLE.
That's the consequence of socialism and bureaucracy and administrative overhead.
And that inequity inflates the retail price of American made goods and services, which indirectly subsidizes foreign made goods and services.
Our own government "did it" to us.

I may be wrong, but one thing is for certain, once all taxes (and bureaucratic overhead) is removed from American production and labor, equitable trade will resume.

You may denounce the near-slave labor in Indonesia, but that $0.02 per hour can buy another man's hour of labor - in that market. Which is what equitable trade is all about.

In America, the socialist overhead insures inequitable trade.
To illustrate, back in 1991, I knew an on-site Computer tech who was paid $10/hour. But his company billed at $75/hour.
For that tech to "hire himself" for one hour, he'd have to work 7.5 hours.
That's INEQUITABLE.
That's the consequence of socialism and bureaucracy and administrative overhead.
And that inequity inflates the retail price of American made goods and services, which indirectly subsidizes foreign made goods and services.
Our own government "did it" to us.

The only remedy is to remove that inequity.
Then watch what happens.

This is, of course, the argument against the Minimum Wage. Although "inequitable" is the socialist cry that always ends up getting to a much more inequitable system. If wages and prices are free to vary then we will get our moneys' worth on both ends of the transaction, selling our labor and buying goods and services from others. Capitalism is everything about "equitable."

The interference in this system is that there is about 1/3 of the world's population where people are enslaved to perform their labor at subsistence wages. China, Russia, Indonesia, 1/2 of Central and South America, probably much of other Asian countries I do not know much about, etc. The product of these wages enters the stream of commerce in the form of very cheap goods and services.

This messes the whole system up. But its still better than the government telling us what we earn. We just have to work a little harder and smarter.

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